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Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE [EOL] vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine N...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2741271 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nutanix Administrator at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Has provided seamless upgrade experiences and robust technical support
I have heard there are many features added in NKP that are not available in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE, such as load balancer features. The unified control plane feature is not being used in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE. We are currently using a third-party tool for load balancing, but going forward, NKP will include load balancer, ingress, and egress features, making infrastructure management much easier. There is no auto-scaling feature in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE; however, NKP offers it. In NKE, we created additional worker nodes and increased CPU and RAM capacity, but it required manual intervention. Concerning policy-driven governance in Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE, we have the ability to implement RBAC at the cluster level, which helps maintain security by not granting full admin privileges to every end user, thus restricting access effectively.
Marouane - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at MISSASERVICE
Integrated pipelines have accelerated continuous deployment and improved incident response
The powerful thing about Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is for deploying how to install our application, how to deploy it, and it is easy to work with this platform to do DevOps or CI/CD. It is easy to do CI/CD with this platform and to add functionality in our application. We can add functionality in our application easily with this platform. We can go quickly from dev testing, integrating, and deploying quickly with this platform. The integrated CI/CD pipelines of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform have a time-saving impact on our development process. When we use the CI/CD functionality, the main saving is really important compared to combining many other tools to have the same result. In Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, you have everything integrated, but in other platforms, you have to set up many tools to have the same output. In Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, it is ready to set up, or almost set up; you only have to configure it. Time-saving is one of the important things.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"My experience with Nutanix's technical support is excellent."
"Karbon is embedded in the hypervisor, there are no deployment costs and the administration is via Prism Central."
"The product integrates well with our infrastructure."
"The platform is valuable due to its ease of use and quick deployment capabilities."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of the Nutanix Kubernetes Engine (NKE) are its simplicity and efficiency during the initial cluster creation phase."
"Nutanix's support is really good."
"Nutanix is very stable and reliable, based on my experience with many customers, including large banks and telcos."
"The operating system has a live update and is more secure than any other. It's made for Atomic OS, a lightweight OS new to the market. I also like the source-to-image capabilities. The customer can directly deploy their applications from the repository. It's a highly flexible and easy way to deploy into production."
"They have built on top of Kubernetes. Most of the Kubernetes latest technology is already supported by the solution."
"Centralized control of container resources is most valuable."
"The auto scalability feature, which is based on smart agendas, determined from pre-prepared rules is the most valuable feature. You can also create different routes for deployment. Deployment types can be provided with an identifier, such as an ARB deployment. This really helped in rolling out releases without disrupting services for the end-users."
"Since we had limited time for our project, this solution was very helpful in getting us into production within a short time frame."
"OpenShift is a user-friendly container platform with a solid GUI that helps you follow what is going on and gives you an overview of all your clusters. It's more user-friendly than the Kubernetes itself. The interface helps you learn the platform and provides access to some features or specific comments."
"Technical support is good; they are fast and reliable."
"The software is user-friendly and straightforward to use, which is favorable to a developer."
 

Cons

"The product lacks some virtualization capabilities, making it an area for improvement where the solution can focus on providing users with more virtualization capabilities related to disk systems."
"It's mostly for lab purposes; we haven't seen a lot of traction in the market from enterprise customers yet."
"In the next release, I would like to have automatic dynamic scaling, both upscaling and downscaling."
"GUI lacks sufficient information to help with understanding the installation and process."
"There have been challenges related to software bugs, especially regarding long-term licensing options and issues within our customer network."
"NKE could benefit from additional features that support more advanced Kubernetes functionalities and configurations."
"There have been cases where we've deployed with Karbon and haven't seen that it includes errors."
"One major issue we faced was that appliances couldn't migrate from VMware to the tool. However, this seems to be a common problem across platforms. We've seen the same issue when migrating from VMware to RHV or other solutions. It's not specifically a Nutanix problem but rather an issue migrating appliances from one VM infrastructure to another. Some kernel-level and storage-level issues impact this process."
"The interface has numerous UI bugs that need addressing."
"The UI could be more user-friendly to drive tasks more effectively through the interface."
"Setting up OpenShift locally can be challenging, particularly because it requires RHL Linux and has specific restrictions."
"The pricing is quite high. It would be nice if they could make it more competitive."
"The price needs to be improved in OpenShift Container Platform. When I choose this, the product is the first factor that we have to make a long analysis to compare the real cost for the other services. However, price is high."
"The setup process is not great and could be better."
"Quality of support may be improved."
"Another thing that bugs me is that they removed the software in NFS storage. I don't understand why because this is a common type of storage. I am having problems with that, so I wish they would put it back."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's licenses are included in the software version deployed in our data center."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"While deploying Kubernetes clusters on Nutanix is cost-effective, there may be additional costs for remote branch offices where Kubernetes is less common."
"I rate NKE's pricing a six out of ten."
"The platform is averagely priced. I rate the pricing as four out of ten."
"Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"The pricing is a bit more expensive than expected."
"I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it."
"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."
"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."
"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."
"We have to pay for the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
In terms of features, I cannot comment technically, but the real value is the consolidated out-of-the-box solution that Nutanix offers. Nutanix has built great branding and a lot of credibility and...
What is your primary use case for Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
I have experience with OpenShift, Kubernetes, and Nutanix, as we are one of the largest Nutanix resellers in the Middle East. We handle Kubernetes on the cloud as well, so we manage most of the Kub...
What advice do you have for others considering Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE?
I don't have a technical role, but we are a system integrator, so we sell solutions such as OpenShift and Kubernetes as part of the sales team. We are a reseller called eSky IT, and I serve as the ...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing is not that much due to the pay-as-you-go model of AWS. However, I am not aware of the setup cost as I have only worked on ...
What needs improvement with OpenShift Container Platform?
I have something regarding Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. It is a little bit complicated to set up Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on a local server. You have to buy or have many resour...
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Karbon
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, SAIC Volkswagen
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
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